Whale porn?

Wow, I haven't posted in awhile. I've been so busy trying to keep up with Freesia and housework that I haven't actually spent as much time online as I usually do. Nor have I spent as much time knitting as I've meant to.

Mostly I've been reading--I finally found the local library. Very nice little place, about the size of our trailer with all the walls knocked out. But the librarians are helpful enough when it comes to finding or getting books in.

As for the whale porn reference, we've been watching a documentary on the life of mammals. Very nice one. It shows these blue whales in a breeding frenzy. In the first part of the ritual, the female plays a little hard to get, and the whales around her reach out with their tentacle like penises and poke her in the vagina as she tries to get away while swimming on the surface. Then after she's had enough of this she dives and lets them gangbang her.

When I say tentacle like penis, I do mean that. They thrust out and sort of wave around out of the water until they find the vaginal opening. Their ejaculate is measured in quarts. And as I'm sitting there watching this with my husband, I can't help but say in a questioning voice, "Whale porn?"

This of course is quite funny to the tribble that is my hubby. There are few other instances where they show animals mating, and at each one, it was "blank porn?"

Let's just say it was funny, and I don't think you really had to be there to get it. So there.

Weather and small children

It's been raining here about once a week, but for some reason, yesterday was the worse. I think it was because Chris hasn't been feeling well. Thankfully, Freesia hasn't caught what ever it was, and as always I only got the stomach portion of the show.

Freesia is going a little house crazy. I'll be glad to get to the library today so she can at least get out a bit. Also, I need to get out myself. There is just something about the farm that grates after awhile.

I'm thinking of putting up some flyers in Butler about maybe getting together a play group for Freesia. Also, I would love to get a knitting group started. I'm going to ask around at the library today to find out if they have any info on it.

Hopefully, this will be something that will get both Freesia and I out of the house.

P.S., there are new pictures up in our public gallery--check out the latest album for the ravioli smeared umpalumpa baby.

100th post!

Well, I'm back, again. Still behind on editing my novel, but my shawl is coming along, and I've finished my dad's socks and a pair of mittens for Freesia. Pictures of the last two items along with new pictures of Freesia will be going up at the photo album soon.

We've also gotten the webcam and the microphone up and working. And I'm seriously thinking about podcasting and what a pain it would be on a dial up. Maybe once we get our credit cards paid we'll pick up a cable modem or something.

On the other hand, I've been thinking about this being my 100th post and thought that I might try one of those "100 things about me" memes.

100 things about me:

1. I am a mother.
2. I am a knitter.
3. I root for the underdog, especially against defined authority figures. Everytime, whether I'm right or not.
4. I am nonpartisan as far as my voting is concerned.
5. I believe in the death penalty and abortion. According to my religion, both are the same.
6. I am anxious to get pregnant again, especially since I'm over thirty.
7. I feel selfish when I buy for myself, so I have to have an allowance so I can buy stuff for my hobbies.
8. I don't wear make up.
9. I don't wear clothing unless I have to. I like to call myself an indoor nudist. When I was thinner, I would go topless at festivals.
10. I like breastfeeding my daughter. It isn't any sort of sexual thrill, it's the closeness. I feel like she's listening as I talk to her, which is a switch from how I feel when she's into everything in the house.
11. I am a fundamentally lazy person about everything but knitting.
12. I strive to be a Knitter, but I still haven't finished an actual fitted garment other than socks or mittens.
13. I hate commericals.
14. I love Stephen King novels.
15. I dislike movie and television spoofs.
16. I hate any movie that Adam Sandler has ever been in. I think he should have stuck to songwriting.
17. I dislike the "movie actor" Martin Lawrence. He was much funnier when he had his own TV show and was doing stand up.
18. My taste in movies is almost diametrically opposed to my father's. This is the reason I spend almost some of every visit hiding in their kitchen.
19. I think Russel Crowe looks like my husband, and that is the explanation I gave Chris as to why I have a crush on him. (Russell Crowe and Chris actually do look a lot a like, at least until Chris started on his thirties paunch.)
20. I like my husband's love handles.
21. I like being fat myself. I don't have to wear fashionable clothes, only comfortable ones.
22. I don't diet, but I do eat sensibly.
23. I try not to put on more weight instead of concentrating on losing it.
24. As much as I love my mother, I also acknowledge that putting me on a 1000 calorie diet when I was twelve, then again at thirteen, again at fourteen, then again when I was sixteen, may have stunted my height and messed up my metabolism.
25. I will never starve my daughter.
26. I will never let my daughter starve herself.
27. I rarely knit for myself.
28. I love to spin, but haven't had the time since we moved because of the baby and we are still unpacking.
29. I hate the war in Iraq, but not the soldiers there.
30. I dislike people on general principal. This doesn't include people I consider to be family.

I've been holding this post for two days trying to think up more things to put here, but can't. I just don't have 100 things of interest about me, I think.

So it goes up, unfinished. Gee, a lot like life, huh!

Delurks and stuff

So someone told me this was National De-Lurking Week. If you would like to comment and let me know you read this, please feel free.

I know I haven't written here lately. Chris is gone more often then not nowadays. I'm so far behind on housework because of Freesia and her tandrums that I've been concentrating just on the kitchen. I think she's having problems because every time the living room is cleaned it changes.

However, I have gotten my dad's socks done, just a couple of weeks late. I'll be getting in touch with him later today about whether he wants them mailed or just given next time we see him. I'm currently working on my shawl. I'll be posting a link to the pattern once it's done.

In other news, Aimee (aka SheWhoReads) has sent me an invitation to a game called LOST. Basically, you are given points for how many people you can convince to join, and if you are one of the top ten scorers you can win a prize. The basic premise as stated by the website is:

"LOST is a student project. The aim of LOST is to show how 7 million people
connect to one another, and break the record for the game with the most players
ever! LOST enables you to interact with people across the world, and see how you
are linked to them."

If you would like to help along my point total, just click here. After completing a profile, your position is marked on a map, and I can see where all my readers are :D.

Aside from playing around with this sort of thing, I haven't gotten much editing done on my NaNovel this month. I still have time, but I'm pushing it.

Mike and Dan have left and I am a putz

Mikey and Dan have left. A bit depressed over that. I tried to convince them that they could live in my pocket, but they wouldn't believe me. We do love those two so.

The baby was really starting to warm up to them toward the end as well. It was delightful to see. I have a photo album set up of their visit for those who want to her cuteness and the guys themselves.

In other news, I almost destroyed my computer with a knitting needle. I had started a sock on dpns and was picking up the free dpn to start the next round. It was late, and I fumbled, and the damn needle disappeared. We tore up the area around my computer to try to find it. No luck.

Just as I was planning another trip into Warner Robbins, site of the nearest mall. I hear Chris snicker. He points out to me my dpn sticking out of the one of the little holes that provide ventilation for my computer.

So I'm a putz. But I have been knitting socks, and that makes me a genius!

Wonderful weekend and sheep wrap tips

We have Mikey and Dan down for the weekend. Right now, Chris is showing them the farm while feeding cows. I have been assured that they will have a good time. In the mean time I've been trying to check my email while Freesia drives me nuts.

I did finish the Tawanda for Dan. It is a bright purple scarf/shawl called a sheep wrap. It is pretty easy with the right application of stitch markers. I placed a stitch marker on both sides of the center stitch then added one on either side every 25 stitches. It really helped the wrap go quicker because I wasn't constantly recounting.

Well, must go feed the monst... uhm, Freesia. Yeah, that's what I meant.

Just a FYI

My knitting web album is up, and I'll be adding some code to the site that hopefully will allow you to see the pictures at the bottom of the page, or the side bar, I haven't decided yet.

Oh, my goddess!

For a moment, blogger forgot I had switched over this blog. I fought for a good twenty minutes to get this blog back. Whew!

Anyway, things are moving apace here. We will be doing some X-mas shopping this evening, but I'm afraid that for the most part, not many people will be getting toys. I need to talk to Chris but we will probably be sending an email to the relevant people letting them know not to get us anything this year, since we won't be able to reciprocate.

Especially since I'm not doing the late X-mas gift thing this year. I do plan to knit some things for myself next year. I have my eyes on a shawl, and possibly a hat to match. As well as a wrap shirt from Big Girl Knits.

Well, that's all for now, cause Freesia is demanding I attend her :D.

A new format for a new year.

I finally let myself be talked into the new Blogger beta. I don't know if I like it, but I do like anything that will allow me to tag posts without all the coding. I hate coding.

In other news, I've started Tawanda--Mikey knows what I mean. There may eventually be pictures. And as for pictures, I finally found a way to upload pictures to the web without my dial up clunking out on me. Check out the side bar, or click here.

Anyway, just updating to let everyone know what's up. Expect a knitting album to show up there sometime soon.

Arrgggh! Where is the yarn?

So the front room actually looks like a living room now. No boxes, and everything squared away. However, after a couple of days of neglect, the kitchen is a war zone. It won't take long to get it squared away, however.

Now I just need to find the yarn. I can't believe I haven't unpacked it yet. With temperatures dropping, I was going to knit Freesia some leg warmers so she could still wear her dresses along with some felted booties for to wear in the morning to keep her feet warm.

I also have some socks I was going to knit for my dad, and a few other things, but now I can't find my yarn. It is somewhere in the depths of the walk in closet that we have yet to excavate. I know my wool is there--it's driving me crazy. Especially since I found a pattern for a teletubby doll, and Freesia loves the teletubbies.

Oh, goddess, what am I going to do when the only project that is accessable to me is done? I'm going to go into knitting overload, or unpacking overload. One or the other.

So let us try this again, or Wavy Scarf pattern take two

I've tried once today to post this pattern to Blogger, but there was some sort of snafu. Well, we'll just try again, yah?

This is a pattern for what I call Wavy Scarf. I knitted it for my dad last Christmas, but I don't think I posted the pattern here. Basically, by using two different weights of yarn, you creat a three dimensional fabric that has waves in it. I will warn you that selvage stitch (slipping the first stitch in every row) does not do anything to control the curling.

Materials:
2 skeins of bulky weight yarn A(I used Lamb's Pride bulky in one of their shades of blue)
2 skeins of worsted weight yarn B(I used Lamb's Pride worsted in gray)
Size 11 needles, or needles to give you the gauge you like for a scarf

Cast on holding yarn A and yarn B together. Next purl a row holding the two yarns together. Then follow the following pattern:

(Rows 1 and 2) Knit one row with A; purl one row with A.
(Rows 3 and 4) Knit one row with B; purl one row with B.
(Rows 5 and 6) Knit one row with A and B together; purl one row with A and B together.

Continue those six rows until the scarf is as long as you want it to be, twisting the yarn strands around each other up one side (this will not be noticeable unless inspected by a fellow knitter) to carry the excess yarn up to the appropriate row. I found it easier to bind off on 5 instead of 6, but that just depends on what edge you want to leave.

Add fringe in the usual way if you wish.

In laws ride to the rescue and yarn harlotry by yours truly

So my mother in law has ridden to the rescue over the fuel pump issue our van is having. She says that we should save our favors from other relatives and let her take care of this.

This proves that my mother in law is really a great person, despite the character flaw of being a morning person with a snore you can hear through a building. And I can prove it too you.

A friend of her, or my sister in law--not sure which, was moving to Singapore and wanted to give me her yarn stash. My mother in law shipped it to me herself, instead of my having to pay to have it shipped. She also shipped it as a surprise.

So we eventually get this box that used to hold several reams of paper, that she has told us to be on the look out for but didn't tell us what was inside. And inside was several skeins of Red Heart acrylic nestled in with so many skeins of Lion's Brand Molinare (in several different scrumptious colors) that my heart almost exploded. For those that don't know, Molinare was an acrylic mohair from like the eighties. I almost couldn't touch the stuff.

You know what this glorious super fuzzy three ply said to me as I petted it and sighed as my husband called to thank my mother in law. It said linings. It said hat linings, and mitten linings. It tried to whisper to me of sock linings, but I managed to get the lid back on the box.

I currently cast on an experiment for the hat linings tonight, because I couldn't sleep.

It's silly, but I was too happy to sleep. I've been so depressed over that stupid van that all I've wanted to do was sleep, and after staring at the ceiling for about four seconds, I just had to do something for someone else, so I cast on this hat. Even if the lining doesn't work for this pattern, I'll still have a finished hat out of it for Dulaan. And I have like three other patterns that I think will do.

All the proof you need that she is a wonderful woman. Oh, and aside from sending me yarn, she is paying to have our van fixed.

LATE: Project Spectrum: March

These were actually finished on time, I have just been lazy about blogging. What do you think of these cute cherry beauties?