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The world if you are a dog. Or a cat.
I need to teach Hannibal The FluffBall Of Doom to do this. Or, I could try this.
Drinking on the toadstools.
An architecture joke.
The truth about Fifty Shades of Grey.
Solution to the world's energy problems.
... and that's why gas prices are going up.
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When I was organizing my craft area, I came across a particular type of paint brush I had purchased for some long-forgotten project.
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The real nostepinne lives next to my chair in the living room. The fake one lives in my craft area. No more dashing back and forth when I have a little bit of yarn to wind into a ball.
PSA: hand exercises for knitters and crocheters. More.
I need to stop linking to silly season knits.
Tattoo. Another. The knitting tattoo to end all knitting tattoos.
Icelandic sweater pattern generator.
I like the Venn diagrams.
Mock cable stitch as I have not seen it before.
Tree change dolls. More here and here.
I could see making this double-knit cowl.
A different kind of mitered square blanket.
The Etsy story.
How to do perfect button placement.
Hot air balloon knitting.
Word.
Solution to the single sock problem.
OMG, I am on Madame Dafarge knits!
Nifty socks and interesting cowl.
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* Name that tune.
Any of you in New England, particularly in the Boston area, may want to look away from this post. Unlike you, we have places to put our snow.
A couple weeks ago Smokey was backing his car down the driveway. We tend to back down in the winter because there is not enough room to turn around (until next summer and forever after, but that is another story entirely) and it is easier to back down and drive forward up the hill than vice versa.
Anyway.
He was trying to put his car as far to one side as possible so as to give me lots of room when I drove out. He is nice like that, but it got him into trouble this time. He got too far over to one side and got stuck in a snowbank.
The sharp-eyed and car-savvy among you may notice that his car is an Isuzu Trooper, a 4WD vehicle. How in the world did he get it stuck in that little snowbank, you may wonder? (As some of us did wonder, but never out loud.)
Here is a clue:
Younger Son using a Sawzall to cut off the iron pipe the car was hung up on.
Why was that pipe there? Well, it's part of that other story that I may or may not blog.
Once the pipe was removed, my little Volvo performed admirably in pulling the much bigger and heavier Trooper out of its predicament. (Please note the warm hand-knit hat sported by YS.)
Notice how I [finally!] managed to embed an animated gif? Yay, me!
The remains of the villain.
photo credit: Ugg & Lee - Marketing and Backlinks via photopin (license)
The 22 stages of visiting your library. Another library gem.
The many and varied possible causes of obesity.
A different kind of homeschooling.
This one is dedicated to our friends in Boston.
I love ballet.
Do you read Victoria Elizabeth Barnes? Because she is hilarious.
Links from Chris. And more. And even more.
Man leaves house wearing unflattering suit and no makeup.
I could have died.
Bookstore sections.
Lakes that look like art.
Cats & snow: helpful, and the best gif of winter.
One reason I sometimes daydream about moving back to MN.
Coolest kitchen gadgets. via martinimade.com
Does your chicken need a sweater?
Eight inches of snow in... Jerusalem?
Epic photos of America's cold snap.
We may be living in a modern mass extinction.
Yes, this IS a heat wave. It was -19˚ F yesterday morning at this time.
On the other hand, we are not battling 8 feet of snow.
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In other news, I got new glasses.
Yarn: Trekking XXL in a red/black/brown variegated that I have had for so long it is pre-Ravelry and apparently discontinued, held together with one strand of Knit Picks Essential (now called Stroll) in a deep red color.
Needles: Addi Turbo US#2.5 (foot) and US#4 (leg).
Pattern: Wendy's Generic Toe-Up Sock Pattern.
Size: 48 st.
I needed more red socks and I needed more thick socks -- these are the result. I started them shortly before Christmas, but the first sock was too tight. I knit the second sock, which fit, then bit the bullet and frogged and reknit the first one. Now they are perfect.
These are my current pride and joy. Two strands of sock yarn held together
made them look like handspun. And they were stashbusters!
Yarn: Online Supersocke 100 Living Color 1051 and Knit Picks Felici Rustic Cabin.
Needles: Addi Turbo US#2.5 (foot) and US#4 (leg).
Pattern: Wendy's Generic Toe-Up Sock Pattern.
Size: 48 st.
I made these at least five years ago in December 2007 for Younger Son, but he never took them.
Now they are minemineMINE!
Yarn: Knit Picks Comfy or Shine Worsted in some long-discontinued color, plus ivory stripes. It has been so long, and it was before Ravelry, and I don't remember. If I had to guess I'd say it was Comfy, since the yarn has zero shine. Yay for blogging -- I found this old post about the socks.
Needles: US#5, maybe? Or maybe US#6?
Pattern: Some generic top-down sock pattern.
Size: To fit Younger Son, which was of course a bit too big for me. I threw them in the washer and dryer last week, and now they fit perfectly.
Warm feet! Go, me!
Every year the village north of us has an ice palace during their winter carnival. It -- both carnival and palace -- are somewhat smaller than the ones in St Paul and elsewhere.
Of course, the 2015 Luck ice palace didn't have the luxury of being situated directly in front of the Landmark Center, as the one in St Paul did, but it also was not as commercialized (above, lower right; click to embiggen).
Ice palaces have a long and storied history in the Land Of 10,000 Lakes.
Here is the Luck ice palace:
Somewhat smaller, but just as much a source of local pride.
One advantage of a small-town ice palace is that the viewer can see its inner workings.
Although the 2015 Luck ice palace is small, it is larger than the one I last chronicled here.
Bringing down an ice palace is as much fun as building it. Maybe more...
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A Twin Cities television station has a feature called Going to the Lake, wherein two of their anchors travel to a vacation destination in MN or WI. The female anchor and the sports anchor came to Luck for the winter carnival. We watched them on TV: in front of the ice palace, in a local bar, having lunch at coffee house/cafe.
Edited to add: you can watch the Going to the Lake segments here.
The coffee house/cafe staged its second annual trivia contest during the winter carnival. Smokey, Younger Son, and I had participated the the first one and came in second. When I called the coffee shop to register they told me the contest was full! This is the first time in all our years here that anything -- a theatre, a restaurant, anything -- turned us away because it was full; such is one of the joys of small-town life.
But they called again the morning of the contest to say one of the teams had canceled and we were in. Younger Son got here 24 hours earlier than he usually does on a weekend, just so he could participate in the contest.
This was before all the contestants had arrived. The room was packed during the contest.
We remembered from the first contest that in order to win, a team has to bet big when they can So we did, and we didn't know the answer, and we lost all our points halfway through. Had we gotten that single question right, we might have won. [/whine]
How to hang your sweaters.
Another little giftie stashbuster.
The silly season: not over yet.
Our superpower.
Chile may be the yarn bombing capital of the world.
Iceland is melting.
This is gorgeous.
Yet another article about the therapeutic value of knitting.
I find myself fascinated with knitted quilts.
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Dear Self,
Your stated intent for this year was to step back from your volunteer activities to free up some time for yourself. How are you doing on that? Not as well as you might be, right?
It's time to pull the trigger on those couple committees that you have already decided to resign from. Procrastination will get you nowhere. Do.It.Now.
Today.
Thanks,
Me
* * * * *
Dear committee chairman,
Thank you for canceling this month's meeting. That gives me more time to compose my letter of resignation (see above).
Your friend,
k
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Dear hat & scarf combo,
I was so excited when I bought those two colors -- mottled brown and mottled blue -- of Malabrigo in December. A scarf! A matching hat! I would be so damned cool, er, warm. And when I had the brainstorm to double-strand that Malabrigo worsted with some mohair -- mottled gold/brown/blue -- I was over the moon! This would be fabulous!
Hat, you were fabulous. You were beautiful beyond my expectations. The double-stranding worked wonderfully, your colors were miraculous, your feel was soft and warm.
The problem arose when I put you on my head and looked in the mirror. Oh, you fit just fine. The problem was that the fashionable slouch I had envisioned turned out to be simply... droopy. At my stage of life, droopy is not a good look. So I reserve you for extremely cold days and then only wear you for the dash from car to [wherever I am going]. Such a sad fate for such a potentially fabulous hat.
Scarf, I have no problems with you except that the double-stranding makes it extremely difficult to keep track of where I am in my super simple striping pattern. Do you care if the pattern does not repeat in a regular manner? Do you care if one end of yourself is not symmetrical with the other? I don't care myself, but I thought it would be only fair to consult you in the matter. Not that I will listen to what you say, but I am being fair.
Sadly,
k
I gave The Jokester and her daughter a ride to Wal-Mart again yesterday.
Not The Jokester. Nor her daughter.
Joke the first.
The fire chief noticed that the little girl next door was fixing up her red wagon to look like a fire truck. It had a hose and a bucket and a little ladder, and she had tied her cat to the front handle to pull it.
It was so cute that he went over to compliment her on her tiny fire truck. But when he looked more closely, he noticed that the wagon was not tied to the kitteh's neck or collar, as he had expected, but instead was tied to its nuts.
"Why is that?" he asked. "Wouldn't it be better to tie the wagon to the cat's collar?"
"Oh, no," she said. "Then I wouldn't have the siren!"
Joke the second.
Two little old ladies went for a walk in the park. After a while they got tired, so they sat down on a handy bench, and lit up to have a smoke while they rested. But soon it started raining. One lady took a condom out of her purse, cut a little hole in the end, and put it over her cigarette. She was able to sit and smoke without her cigarette getting wet from the rain.
The second lady, who was rather sheltered and naive, said, "What is that thing? And where could I get one?"
"It's called a condom, and you can get them at the pharmacy."
The next day lady #2 went to the drugstore and asked the pharmacist for a condom. He said, "What size?"
She replied, "One that fits on a Camel."
Joke the third.
(She told me this one was a favorite when she was in the nursing home after breaking her hip.)
A young woman was going to visit her granny in the nursing home when her car hit a patch of ice and slid into the ditch. Happily, a man in a long trench coat jumped out of her trunk and began directing traffic so that the gawking drivers didn't run into each other. Soon there was a massive traffic jam, with cars backed up in both directions.
A sheriff's deputy arrived and demanded to know what was going on. The young woman explained about the ice and pointed to her car in the ditch.
"Who is that man in the trench coat directing traffic?" the deputy asked.
"Oh, him? He's my emergency flasher."
::rim shot::
photo credit: Oh me, oh my... via photopin (license)
Edited to add: The reason I could remember the jokes this time is that while we were parked, I sent myself an email with cues. No way I could have remembered otherwise.
In other news, the capcha problem seems to have been solved.
photo credit: Sad Eliza Too via photopin (license)
Several of you have emailed me to say that the capcha is not working correctly and is blocking your comments. I have started a *ticket* at Typepad asking them to fix it. Here's hoping their people can do so quickly -- I miss you guys.
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photo credit: Happy Happy Cookie via photopin (license)
I have disabled comment verification -- which I did not know was enabled, apparently Typepad in its infinite wisdom enabled it for me -- and that seems to allow comments. If I get bombarded with spam comments I will enable it again. Let's hope Typepad fixed the original problem.
Now: comment at will!
I put my socks under the sleeping dog* this morning while I got dressed. When I put them on my feet, they were warm. Ahhh.
I plan to do this every morning from now until the temps reach 70˚. Sometime in late June.
* She looked much like she does at left, but curled up more tightly and on the bed.
The world needs more stashbuster patterns like this one.
Know anyone getting married in about ten years?
Woman no longer knows what she is knitting.
Edited to add: Please let me know if you have trouble commenting. Apparently there may be a problem.
photo credit: Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) via photopin cc
Links from Chris.
Animal photographers.
The very best school closing announcement EVAH!
There are no stupid questions, right?
Like a boss.
Maps are fun and enlightening.
The daily struggle.
Disney princesses take over the earth.
A short history of the world.
If you want to survive, move to Scandinavia.
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Dear Ricoh,
I am overall pleased with the new laser color printer/scanner/magic machine I purchased from Amazon last year. However, there are one or two things I would like to discuss with you.
Thank you for your prompt attention to these matters.
/s/ A customer who could possibly be a bit happier
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Dear Hannibal The Fluffball Of Doom, aka The Fluffy Black Cat,
I apologize for bopping you in the head this morning, but really, what is a cat mom supposed to do when her favorite feline suddenly and without warning BITES HER FINGERTIP?! HARD! You had been carousing romping playing with the dog right before that, but surely you had gotten all that biting and clawing out of your system before you curled up on my lap and began to purr. Was it all just a pretense to lull me into a false sense of security, to lure me to begin to scratch your ears?
However, all is forgiven now. When you reached out with your paw and pulled the injured finger toward yourself and licked it, I realized I had witnessed something never before experienced in the history of the universe: my cat had apologized to me.
love,
k
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Dear Aging Mac Mini,
You have been my good and faithful friend for, lo, these past 6.5 years, but I fear you are growing increasingly feeble. The long wait whilst your beach ball spins for what seem like days when I have more than a few tabs open, the groans I hear from your hard drive when I consider opening Word and Excel at the same time, the way you stop working entirely when I open iTunes -- all these things make my heart sad because they mean you are nearing your last disk check.
I just want to say forget it.
Your hard drive is gonna keep spinning, your memory is gonna keep remembering, and your processor is gonna keep doing whatever the hell I tell it to do because I cannot buy a new computer right now. I just got a new iPad to replace the one that caught on fire last summer, I just paid the first half of our property taxes (how could I have forgotten that they are due by January 31 every year, not just the year I remember?), and my laser printer needs a new set of toner cartridges. My checkbook is feeling a tiny bit thin right now, so you are just gonna have to suck it up and keep doing what you do.
Got that? Good.
/s/ The person who controls your power cord.
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